This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Cleveland kidnappings: Ariel Castro awaits sentencing

A onetime school bus driver faces sentencing Thursday for kidnapping three women and subjecting them to years of sexual and physical abuse.

▶

The Cleveland bus driver who abducted, imprisoned and repeatedly raped three women is sentenced to life in prison without parole, after one of his victims confronted him and said he had put her through 11 years of hell.(Reuters)

By Thomas J. SheeranAndrew Welsh-HugginsThe Associated Press

Thu., Aug. 1, 2013

CLEVELAND—A onetime school bus driver faces sentencing Thursday for kidnapping three women and subjecting them to years of sexual and physical abuse.

Prosecutors are expected to detail Ariel Castro’s daily assaults on the women, recounted in diaries that compared the women’s experience to that of prisoners of war. With the possibility of the death penalty for a forced miscarriage taken off the table, Castro stands to get life in prison plus 1,000 years on Thursday.

Ariel Castro listens to the judge as he sits between his attorneys Jaye Schlachet, right, and Craig Weintraub in the courtroom in Cleveland, Ohio. (July 26, 2013) (AARON JOSEFCZYK / REUTERS)

Prosecutor Tim McGinty said in a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday that Castro, who chained his captives and fed them only one meal a day, “admits his disgusting and inhuman conduct” but “remains remorseless for his actions.”

The memorandum says many of the specific charges in Castro’s indictment reflect conduct documented by one of the women in her diary.

“The entries speak of forced sexual conduct, of being locked in a dark room, of anticipating the next session of abuse, of the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family, of being chained to a wall, of being held like a prisoner of war ... of being treated like an animal,” it says.

The sentencing could take up to four hours, court officials said, with Castro, his attorneys, his victims and prosecutors getting a chance to speak. The legal team representing the women’s interests declined to comment in advance on whether they would testify or send statements to the court.

In the court filing, McGinty offered new details of Castro’s treatment of the women, who he said were kept “in a state of powerlessness” through physical, sexual and psychological violence.

“He made them believe that their physical survival depended on him, and he threatened to end their lives if they did not comply with his every demand,” McGinty said.

Castro lured one of the women into his Cleveland home with the promise of a puppy for her son and tricked another by saying she could see his daughter, McGinty said.

He chained his captives by their ankles, fed them only one meal a day and provided plastic toilets in their bedrooms that were infrequently emptied, the filing said.

He menaced them with a gun, threatened them with tales of other captives, some of whom hadn’t made it home, and at one point locked all of them in a vehicle in his garage for three days while he had a visitor.

Castro claimed he didn’t have an exit strategy from his complicated double life and finally gave the women a chance to escape by leaving a door unlocked, the court filing said.

The women, each kidnapped separately when they accepted a ride from Castro on Cleveland’s blue-collar west side, quickly escaped after Amanda Berry kicked out the door panel on May 6 and Castro was arrested within hours. The women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

There was no comment from Castro’s defence team on the eve of sentencing.

Other horrific details of the women’s ordeal had already emerged, including tales of being chained to poles in the basement or a bedroom heater or inside a van, with one woman forced to wear a motorcycle helmet while chained in the basement and, after she tried to escape, having a vacuum cord wrapped around her neck.

Castro repeatedly starved and beat one of the victims each time she was pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times.

He forced the same woman on threat of death to safely deliver the child he fathered with another victim on Christmas Day 2006. The same day, prosecutors say, Castro raped the woman who helped deliver his daughter.

Prosecutors will ask the judge to prohibit Castro from ever seeing his daughter, now 6.

McGinty says experts will also discuss how Castro was able to keep the women captive for so long.

Berry, 27, made a surprise onstage appearance at a rap concert last weekend, and a second victim, Gina DeJesus, 23, made a few televised comments as a privacy fence was being erected around her house. The third victim, Michelle Knight, 32, appeared with Berry and DeJesus in a video in early July thanking the community for its support.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com